her
with tranquillity, and the inexpressible happiness which I experienced in
Lord Byron's society, had so good an effect on my health, that only two
months afterwards I was able to accompany my husband in a tour he was
obliged to make to visit his various estates.

* * * * *

In the separation that had now taken place (1820) between Count Guiccioli
and his wife, it was one of the conditions that the lady should, in future,
reside under the paternal roof:--in consequence of which, Madame Guiccioli,
on the 16th of July, left Ravenna and retired to a villa belonging to
Count Gamba, about fifteen miles distant from that city. Here Lord Byron
occasionally visited her--about once or twice, perhaps, in the
month--passing the rest of his time in perfect solitude. To a mind like
his, whose world was within itself, such a mode of life could have been
neither new nor unwelcome; but to the woman, young and admired, whose
acquaintance with the world and its pleasures had but just begun, this
change was, it must be confessed, most sudden and trying. Count Guiccioli
was rich, and, as a young wife, she had gained absolute power over him.
She was proud, and his station placed her among the highest in Ravenna.
They had talked of travelling to Naples, Florence, Paris,--and every
luxury, in short, that wealth could command was at her disposal.

All this she now voluntarily and determinedly sacrificed for Byron. Her
splendid home abandoned--her relations all openly at war with her--her
kind father but tolerating, from fondness, what he could not approve--she
was now, upon a pittance of 200_l_. a year, living apart from the world,
her sole occupation the task of educating herself for her illustrious
lover, and her sole reward the few brief glimpses of him which their now
restricted intercourse allowed. Of the man who could inspire and keep
alive so devoted a feeling, it may be pronounced with confidence that he
could _not_ have been such as, in the freaks of his own wayward humour, he
represented himself; while, on the lady's side, the whole history of her
attachment goes to prove how completely an Italian woman, whether by
nature or from her social position, is led to invert the usual course of
such frailties among ourselves, and, weak in resisting the first impulses
of passion, to reserve the whole strength of her character for a display
of constancy and devotedness afterwards.

* * *